The people who prayed always shamed me for refusing to get down on my knees. They called me a lost lamb, as though losing my way was some great sin, as though my lifestyle was something they had the right to condemn. But I took a strange sort of pride in it.
Because, despite everything they said, I knew I was better than them.
Mr. Robert was always drunk. An abusive husband who prayed loudly every Sunday and came home angry every night.
Mrs. Jenskin neglected her children so thoroughly that her kids became the town's little disasters.
And the officer who was supposed to keep us safe? He barely patrolled at all. Most days, he was sitting in his car, eating donuts while the town carried on without him.
Yet somehow, I was the lost lamb.
I was still a decent human being.
I knew right from wrong. I knew when someone was hurting. I knew when someone needed help.
The church had been losing me since I was young. The adults taught me how to pray. They taught me that God listened. They taught me that if I asked sincerely enough, He would answer.
So when I was in that alley, I prayed.
I prayed and prayed until there was nothing left in me that could still believe.
But everything was already too late.
No one noticed the child.
No one noticed a screaming girl begging for someone to help her. No one came.
And somewhere between those prayers and the silence that followed, I stopped believing that anyone was listening.
But I keep coming back to this church. Probably because I like the interior, and I want to feel something, but I can't. Sometimes I feel like I'm being laughed at for losing my innocence at such a young age. For using sex to scrape together a living, to keep living in this cruel world.
I shouldn't be here.
I know that.
So why did I come back?
The church was almost completely dark when I entered. Only the candles near the altar were still burning.
And there he was.
"You came back."
Of course he noticed.
He always notices.
I wanted to tell him that I wasn't looking for forgiveness.
I wasn't looking for God either.
Something I couldn't put into words.
Something that frightened me more than the thought of being condemned.
Don't look at me like that.
Please.
Or maybe I don't want you to stop.
God forgive me.
If He is still listening.